Catherine Fairbanks. Nurses Under Lakes

About

In Nurses Under Lakes, Fairbanks navigates the interplay between her dual roles as a critical care nurse and an artist, where the act of caregiving subtly permeates the canvases. Both realms of care and creativity flow together, shaping a body of work that is as meditative as it is visceral.

The exhibition’s central motifs—the nurse and the lake—labor together, though passive, in horizontal form. The simplified figures of the nurses with chimneys protruding from them, can be found under expansive lake scenes, both resting and working beneath the surface, a silent but potent undercurrent to the landscapes above.

The lakes themselves are an amalgam of memories—each painting an accretion of experiences and bodies of freshwater. Painted in flashe on gesso-prepared canvases and hand-mullered pigments in wet lime for fresco, these lakes provide a tranquil but powerful contrast to the knowledge of the laboring bodies below.

In these works, the juxtaposition of the personal and the political is palpable. These pieces challenge viewers to reflect on the ways care is both seen and unseen, how the act of caregiving itself remains invisible beneath the surface of daily life. Here, boredom and labor, life and death, rest and work, are in constant dialogue.

The works invite us to consider the role of empathy, not just as an emotional gesture but as a radical, active form of engagement with the world. They remind us that “lack of empathy is a public health crisis,” something that has remained hand written on her studio walls for over a decade. The lake, as both a metaphor and a material reality, becomes a place where the artist swims between the dualities of their existence, balancing care for existing forms and creation of new forms.